Omaha daily bee., 1887-03-20
The Boom in Real Estate.
Sc Louis G,obe-Dem,

Wlthin the past rev months the tlde OF
speculative investment has taken new
and somewhat unexpected turn. Deal
ings in wheat, oil, pork and lard have,
excepting to the professional and anna.
teur operator, lost many of their attrac.
tions. The great outside public whose
money lent life and activity to the wheat
and pork pits" in the past are placing
their capital elsewhere. Vanishing are
the glory and the glamor in which the
stock board has stood in the popular i'm.
agiratio The picturesque charm which
erstwhile attended transactions in puts"
and calls" is slowly and steadily depart
ing For eight or ten months past the
transactions in real estate have increased
to surprising extent Nor is this ex-
pansion altogether confined to the west
and south. 1t Is seen to n greater or less de-
gree all over the country. A syndi-
cate OF eastern capitalists has
just been formed to establish a
city in the wilderness of western
Texas. as a similar. syndicate recently
created the city of Admission in the viii.
derness in Alabama, almost in single
night. Combinations of capitalists are
also buying up lands in Florida, Tennes.
see, Minnesota, Kansas, Dakota, Texas
and other states and territories with the
like objects in view. The increased de.
mand for land in and around the rapidly
growing cities of the northwest, central
west, southwest and south have wonder.
fully raised land values in those locali
ties. Even in the east the purchases of
real estate are now larger and more
active than that region has known in all
its previous history.
There are many reasons why the public
who have a little money to invest are
forsaking the produce, grain, oil and
stock exchanges and placing their capital
in land. The conspiracies on the part of
bold and INSCRIPTIONS operators
produce, grain and stocks up or
down at will, irrespective of the ac-
ton of the laws of trade, have made
the public suspicious of all dealings and
dealers in those classes of commodities
and securities. 1t has become known
that the grain and prod uce quotations of
to-day, for example, not only bear no
ply and demand either present or pros
pective, but that they afford no reliable
index to the quotations for tomorrow.
The most unerring Judgment of values,
based on years of careful study of the
changing ratios of the worlds produc
tion and consumption-eXcept to one in
the ring-is as vaiueiess, broadly speak
ing, III forming an estimate OF the prices
this morning. on the boards of trade as
would be the haphazard guesses of the
school-boy. The laws designed to
establish the prices of commodities
should be as fixed and lmmutable
as those which prescribe the time
of the earths rotation, or mark
the orbit of Jupiter around the sun;
yet these laws are suspended at the
pleasure of the freebooters OF the eX.
40 ho hor ko,
behindW This is the inscription over
Dante's Inferno. Equally applicable
would such an inscription be over the
entrances to the grain, produce and
stock infernos of our great speculative
centers, as we'll as over those of their
annexes which are found in every city or
thriving village of the country.
substantial in land values. 1t is true
prices of real estate are sometimes run
up to rates at which they cannot perma-
nently be held. But such fictitious val
uatiOns are to some extent inSeparablc
from all commercial transactions. The
instinct which impels flock of sheep to
follow their leader even into danger, and
then to desert him il q panic when peril
becomes actually imminent and
which mankind is not altogether
exempt The tendency which
constrains large numbers of men to set
higher values on their land than the con-
ditiOns of the market warrant, simply be-
cause few other men do SO who do not
care to sell, is phenomenon with which
society has become somewhat familiar.
But compared with the fortunes which
have been swallowed up in the maelstrom
of grain and stock speculation, the losses
by generalization of real estate have been
tritling.
The tendency which manifests itself in
investments In lands is an encouraging
sign of the times. II indicates that there
is larger amount of capital in the coun-
try than was ever known before, and
that the people are enjoying prosperity
altogether unexampled in their previous
history. 1t indicates also that the money
lost by the people in the pork corners,
wheat crashes and railroad bubbles has
not been entirely wasted, and that the
power for evil which has been for years
exerted over the public by the corsairs OF
the grain pit and the stock board has
almost reached the vanishing point.